Everlasting
by Snowman1
Summary: Vaughn has gone Rambaldi crazy. Can anyone save him?


Author: Snowman 

**Beta:** Doona

**Rating:** PG-13, maybe one smutty scene

**Summary:** Vaughn becomes a little bit Rambaldi crazy...can anyone save him?

**Author's Notes**: Firstly, may I be the first to say I've called the Bill Vaughn twist from day one! The whole "he was a follower of Rambaldi" crap was mine, JJ, and you knew it! Secondly, this fic is not necessarily in an "Alternate Universe," more like a "Tangent Universe." Everything up until 3x20 Blood Ties is fair game, even though it takes place a year later.

**Disclaimer:** Do you solemnly swear that you do not own Alias?

Yes, I do 

Do you swear that the characters mentioned in the fiction are not yours?

Excepting Nichole and William, yes 

Do you swear that this work of fiction is yours, but the rest belongs to JJ Abrams?

Yes, I do 

**Now that THAT'S out of the way, I present.... Everlasting**

Chapter 1: Death 

My life has been marked with death. In my job, as a spy, I have continually watched agents within my jurisdiction die. I have killed dozens, some in self-defense, others in cold-blooded murder. There have been times when those particularly close to me have died.

A few years ago, my lover, Sydney Bristow, died. Or so I was told. A fire erupted in her apartment, and DNA test confirmed that she was nothing more than a crisp corpse. Yet, two years later, she showed up in Hong Kong, alive and well, with no recollection of where she had been for the last two years of her life.

I watched as, at the end of that year, Sydney Bristow, shot and killed my wife. But, with some miracle surgery, Lauren came back from the grave, it seemed, and tried to get her revenge.

My best friend Weiss, was shot in the neck five years ago, and he didn't seem like he would make it. But he did.

Almost every time someone I loved died, they came back. 

Another person I love is being added to the list of dead right now. My mother, Nicole, is battling cancer. Of all the battles I have ever seen take place in my life, none have been quite so amazing as this one. An old and battered woman, my mother, is not only surviving, but she's been alive for five months longer than the doctors originally predicted.

Which is why, today, I am not at the LA branch of the CIA, but, instead, in the St. Adrien Memorial Hospital. I am not holding a mission briefing in my hand, but instead a bouquet of red roses. There is a frantic hubbub all around me, but not because of a threat to national security: they're frantic because their loved ones are suffering.

I enter room 309, and a horrible sight graces my eyes. My mother is alive, but barely. Her eyes are open, but her pupils are shot and color is fading from her eyes. Her once light but strong brown hair has, in the four days since I last saw her, turned to grey. Her breathing is hardly there: her chest dosen't move, and if it weren't for the horrible weezing, I would think she was dead.

It took me a minute to register everything that was happening. As soon as I did, I dropped the flowers and rushed to her bedside and looked at the monitors surrounding her. I had never in my life had any medical training at all, but I knew that there was something I could do... some knob that I could turn that would save her.

"Michael, stop." The raspy, hollow sound that escaped her lips was nothing in comparison to the lively voice she once owned.

"No," I cry out, determined to help my mother. I turned back to the monitors and tried again, frantically, to be my mother's savior.

"Michael, stop. I'm going to die. It is what I am meant to do; it is the fate of all of us on this earth."

I stop what I'm doing. I turn around, afraid. My mother's never said anything like this before. Her grey hair and eyes make her look like a witch of some sort.

"Mom, why are you talking -"

"My time on this earth is growing shorter. There's something I have to tell you. He never wanted you to know, but now is the time to tell you.

"Your father is not the man you thought he was. He was a patriot, as far as anyone could tell. He served his country, yes. But, more importantly than that, he served someone else. An Italian, his name was... I don't know. But Michael, he was an abusive man. I know that you envision him as a saint, but that vision is flawed. He had extremely violent tendencies, mostly...towards me. He would drink, nearly every night, and...

"It was horrible, Michael. He was horrible. I can't explain everything. The best way for you to accept this is to read through his journals. They're in the house, under...my bed"

I could see it before she even tried to finish that last sentence. The room's temperature dropped a few degrees as a wave of cold death swept across the room. My mother started shaking, very slightly, until she just, abruptly, stopped.

I suppose I couldn't do anything for a while because of the shock. Not only from watching my mother die, but also trying to absorb the information she had just told me. But after a minute, I realized where I was, who I was.

Who I was staring at.

I rush out of the room, trying to bust the door open with my shoulder, until I realize I had to pull. I pull the door open, and look to the right. Nobody in the hallway. I whip my head around to the left, and I see two nurses and a doctor leaving one patients room.

"Doctor!" I yell.

He looks back at me, and his jovial smile turns to a look of concerned panic, knowing what I'm about to yell.

"My mother, she's dead, in this room."

Immediately, the three of them rush into room 309, pushing me out of the way. In almost slow motion, I see the doctor take the clipboard off of the back of the door, and drop it as he rushes to her bedside. I see one nurse take my mother's pulse, as if she didn't believe me. I watch, hopeless and helpless as they slowly realize what I was trying to keep out of my mind: there was nothing they can do.

I see one of the nurses come up to me, and try to tell me to leave the room. I don't even hear what she's saying to me, I just see her looking at me, and trying to push me out the door. Despite my protests, she persists in trying to not let me back through, and pushing me out. I try to stay for just a little bit more, but it proves futile, and I eventually leave the room.

The door closes behind me, and the slam of the door brings me back into reality. My mother is dead.

My mother is dead.

It seems so surreal.

For years, she's been there for me. She taught me how to speak. How to walk. I saw my first movie with her. She drove me to school on my first day, and was there to hug me when I was rushed to a hospital, having broken my leg. She bought me every birthday present I ever wanted. So often, we spent Christmas together alone, either mourning my dad's death, or wondering when he'd come home from some mission...which I just learned might not have been a CIA mission at all. She and I became a family together, struggling through economic hardships, break-ups (mine and hers). When High School came and I failed English first quarter, she hugged me and said I'd make it through it; I finished that year with an A in English.

And now she's not here.

All I can do, now, is lean against a wall, and slide down it, crying hysterically.


End file.
